Piano concert by Etelka Csuprik

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2019-09-11 20:00 - 2019-09-11 22:00

Date: 11 September 2019, 7 PM - Institute Balassi

Etelka Csuprik is a Hungarian pianist living in Ukraine. She was born in Nagyszőlős, Transcarpathia, in a musical family as the seventh child out of ten. Her grandfather Géza Rózsa was a recognised violinist. At the age of three, Etelka made a lifelong friendship with the piano. She was just five years old when she performed in public the Waltz in C sharp minor No. 7 of Chopin and Schubert's Serenade.With her absolute hearing, sense of music, talent for improvisation, and her enduring practice, she reached quite early, during her childhood a high level of expertise regarding her technical skills and artistic expression on the piano. Some years later, she studied at Lviv Conservatory (Lemberg); she became an internationally renowned pianist under the supervision of Marina Krych, piano professor of the Conservatory. Then she took master classes at the Moscow Conservatory with pianist teachers such as Yevgeny Malinyin, Vera Gornostayeva, Vladimir Viardo, Vladimir Krajnyev. At that time, she gave concerts in several European countries. She worked with renowned conductors including András Ligeti, Jerzy Salvarovsky, Robert de Koning, Karol Strija and Jansug Kakhidze. In her repertoire, you can always find compositions by Liszt, Bartók, Kodály, Chopin, and Scriabin.She has published more than 30 CDs consisting of outstanding works of music literature at record labels ‘Naxis Philips and Amadis’. In 2018, her two new albums were published also in Hungary. Currently, she is making studio records of J. S. Bach's WTC I – II. Etelka Csuprik is a jury member of several international piano competitions in Ukraine and Hungary. She is professor at the Mykola Liszenko National Conservatory in Lviv and pianist in the Philharmonic Orchestra of Lviv County and Subcarpathian County.In 2016, in recognition of his artistic work, she was named ‘Honoured Artist of Ukraine’.In August 2018, the audience could see her among others at the opening concert of the first V4 Piano Festival in Sárspatak where she performed together with the Concerto Budapest Symphonic Orchestra conducted by Andrew Keller. In October 2018, she gave concerts in Madrid and Barcelona, hosted by the Embassy and Consulate General.

Before the concert we invite you to the opening event of the exhibition 21 Grams by Katalin Rényi.

The subject of Katalin Rényi's artworks is always the soul or a transcendent experience – sometimes a mystery – related to it. In each and every case, Rényi’s work points beyond the material world. The gold that appears in her paintings, as an imprint of celestial light, indicates the role of this solar symbol. The glowing black we often encounter in her works represents the absolute, and – by invoking the colour of coal – also symbolizes cleansing by fire. Finally, white signifies not so much purity as absence –a state of “unfilledness”. Momentariness appears as an emphatic element in Rényi’s works. In moments thus conjured, however, some imprint of eternity is always present. Her aquarelle painting, in case of her unusually large works, points beyond the quality of adventitiousness that otherwise characterizes the genre. The fragility of her paper objects – human and animal torsos, captured moments – not only evokes feelings of vulnerability about existing in the material shell that is our body, but also points to the relativity of time, or, more precisely, the moment as measured against eternity. Her works involving encaged elements – through the notion of the captured bird – invoke the notion of the soul’s desire to escape. In this artistic universe, the trauma of life’s end is, by necessity, dissolved in the meaning—generating manifestations of sacrality. Rényi’s works done in colour ink are soul-drawings, whose casual eccentricity and overspilling spots of ink appear almost to have been born of a desire for salvation, suggesting that the paths are many but they all lead to the final hours. This is also symbolized by nature, and especially the fate of trees, which is one of the defining motifs of Rényi’s art. Decay – just as petrification – is a kind of transformation of essence: matter returns to an earlier state.

In Rényi’s artistic universe, the human being that exists in the body is no crown of creation, but a being subjugated to God – an interesting speck of dust. The beauty of human beings is ephemeral, their strength is relative. They lose their bloom, like flowers; they turn yellow and brown, like autumn wheat. The inspired quality of Katalin Rényi’s art originates from this humble acknowledgement – and, without exception, always leads us back to the sacred. To the soul, which, in this vain human world, only amounts to 21 grams – but is, nonetheless, overly burdensome for many.